46

As Valentine drove east along the coast road, a hoar frost had the countryside in its grip, adding bone‐white trees to a landscape of fresh snow. Shaw tried to focus on the events on Siberia Belt the night Harvey Ellis died. The central mystery remained: who had killed him, and how? They’d now interviewed everyone in the line of stranded cars at least twice: all except the teenager who had run from the scene that night as the helicopter had swung in to land on Ingol Beach – young Sebastian Draper. His solicitor had phoned to say he’d be available for interview at nine that morning – but that his client wanted to meet at a scrap‐metal yard on the edge of Wells. He had something to show them, as well as tell them.

John Kimbolton & Sons was a graveyard for cars. It lay a mile out of town on the saltmarsh, the tottering piles of wrecked chassis only partly hidden behind an ugly hedge of leylandii tinted with frost. They flashed their warrant cards at a mechanic working with a welding torch by the entrance.

‘Just looking for a vehicle,’ said Valentine. ‘Nothing to worry about.’

Draper arrived on the stroke of the hour in a powder‐blue Bentley driven by his solicitor. The 18‐year‐old hadn’t chosen his own clothes that morning: a charcoal‐grey suit, the blue tie knotted savagely tight, the shirt as white as a ski slope. Without the baseball cap Shaw could see that his hair was dark, almost black, well cut, brushed back off the pale forehead, but falling forward despite the gel. Just eighteen; his face in transition, the eyelashes too long, his skin flushed, the over‐long arms held awkwardly at his sides. The solicitor was called Barrett; black leather gloves, black brogues, and a skier’s tan.

They shook hands; two detectives, solicitor and client.

‘OK. Sebastian? Why here?’ said Shaw, the snow beginning to fall. They stood by a little column of six crushed cars, one on top of the other. Shaw rested an ungloved hand on the nearest chassis, then pulled it back as he felt his skin freeze to the metal.

Draper had rehearsed his story, which didn’t mean it wasn’t true.

The gap‐year idea had been a disaster. All his friends except Gee Belcher had left the village. He didn’t want to travel abroad, not alone. His parents were in London during the week. Sarah, his girlfriend, had left for university at Durham. His father paid him an allowance but it wasn’t much and so he’d got a summer job with the council, filling holes in the road. He’d made friends, the wrong kind of friends, and stayed on when winter came. He’d get into Lynn by bus, or if he could he’d borrow Rod Belcher’s car, the BMW. They’d sus out likely cars, drink enough to overcome the fear they’d be caught, then pile in and drive out here to Kimbolton’s. Never before seven, the only rule, and cash in hand: £100 per vehicle – any vehicle. They never knew what happened to them but it was easy to guess: there was a paint shed, a pile of number plates, stacks of second‐hand tyres.

Valentine noted that the mechanic had stopped welding and was now on a mobile phone.

‘They gave us the cash in an envelope. Twenties, always twenties. Then we had to go back and wait by the office for a lift into town. That was it, every time.’

The snow was heavier now, settling on the lawyer’s cashmere coat. There was a partly wrecked bus parked by the leylandii – a double‐decker, its windows out. Shaw led them on board and they sat on the stiff icy seats. It was out of the snow but somehow colder, like sitting in a fridge.

Draper told them what had happened that night on Siberia Belt. He’d stolen a car, got caught on Siberia Belt, panicked when the police arrived and fled the scene. One unexpected detail. Draper might have stuck it out for longer that night, but he said he’d recognized Sarah Baker‐Sibley. He said she always picked her daughter up from the discos at Burnham Thorpe. It was a small world, he said. That was the problem with growing up in it.

The interview was, as Shaw had suspected, a depressing dead‐end. He let Valentine take over the questions while he rang St James’s and got put through to the car‐crime unit. They’d need to check out every wreck on the yard before the management had time to cover their tracks.

Valentine was shivering now, holding his raincoat to his thin neck. ‘That night – how’d you get home?’ he asked.

‘In the snow? I got down to the coast road… I fell in – twice. A van stopped and gave me a lift all the way back to Gayton – right to the car. A Renault van.’ He gave them the number.

‘You memorize that?’ asked Valentine, offering him a smoke.

Draper looked at his lawyer, then the Silk Cut, then took one. ‘I don’t need to. I can’t forget numbers – not once I’ve seen them.’ Shaw recalled Parlour’s description of the teenage driver of the Mondeo on Siberia Belt; the T‐shirt logo Pi is God.

‘Why’d you take the steering‐wheel cover with you when you stole the car?’ asked Shaw, taking an interest now, realizing that Valentine had been right to probe.

‘I didn’t have gloves,’ he admitted. ‘I’d been along for the ride before, nicking cars. But they said this one was mine. That way I got the money – all the money. I didn’t want to leave any prints. I used my T‐shirt when I opened the door.’

Draper smoked the cigarette cupped in his hand. ‘We don’t need to go to the station,’ said Shaw. Barrett nodded, catching his client’s eye with a wink.

‘I think you’ve been honest with me, Sebastian,’ said Shaw.

‘Seb,’ he said, then bit his lip.

‘Seb,’ said Shaw. Valentine jiggled his dice key ring. But Shaw hadn’t finished. Something about Seb Draper intrigued him. He wondered what it was like to have the kind of brain that couldn’t forget a number.

‘Seb, we’re trying to find out what really happened out there on that road on Monday night. You know what we found?’

Draper worked a finger in between his neck and the white shirt. ‘The guy at the front, he died, right?’

‘That’s right. We think he was part of a plan to divert the traffic off the road. Mrs Baker‐Sibley’s daughter was abducted that night – while she was stranded out on Siberia Belt.’

Draper’s mouth opened to reveal perfect dentistry.

‘I just need you to tell me precisely what happened,’ said Shaw. ‘You’re good with details, Seb – that’s what we want. That’s where the devil is, right? You left Gayton in the Mondeo when?’

‘Five. Five past. I left the BMW under the trees by the gate to The Walks. Outside number 56. I drove out towards Hunstanton – I took the old road ’cos it’s always quieter. I got behind another car at the lights at Castle Rising. I kept my distance after that, ’cos, like, I didn’t want some stupid shunt on the road. You need to keep it simple, nicking cars – no accidents.’

Barrett was looking at his client, his eyes hardening.

‘I saw lights ahead turning down onto the sea wall. I got to the diversion sign, so I turned too. The lights were ahead, moving away from me. By the time I got round the corner the lights were ahead of me again – but they’d stopped.’

Shaw nodded. ‘So you’d followed the same car from the lights at Castle Rising, to the turning, and then down the causeway until you came to a stop?’

‘Well. Yeah. But that’s an assumption right? For you. Not for me.’

‘Why not for you?’

‘Same model Morris, same number plate – KWX117. I clocked them at the lights.’

He didn’t laugh because he wasn’t joking, and Shaw felt the hair on the back of his neck rise. He thought about it. ‘Because if you hadn’t noticed the registration number and the make of the car it didn’t have to be the same vehicle?’

‘Yeah – I lost sight of it twice. Once on the coast road, and then when it went round the corner on the causeway.’

‘Because in the time it was out of sight it might have pulled off the road, and another one pulled out to take its place?”

‘That’s it,’ said Draper.

Out of the mouths of babes… thought Shaw. He pictured the scene that night on Siberia Belt, able at last to see the events unfolding, creating the puzzle which they’d been unable to break. Until now.